Breaking In To The Elektrobank
Now this is what I have been waiting so long to see: A Palo Alto research scientist is proposing to implant an electrode into his own brain, in order to make emperical connections between collected data, and what he perceives as concious thought. The guy's name is Bill Newsome and he mentions the inherent difficults that he is likely to run into while trying to secure approval to do such experiments. This kind of pioneering spirit harkens back to the work that Dr. Alexander Shulgin has been doing for years, by testing hundreds of custom-made psychedelics on himself, as well as his wife and friends...excellent.
Read the full article/interview over at Technology Review:
"Big Brain Thinking"
"...science and ethics keep one another in check." --Anonymous
2 comments:
Testing the turing machine eh? I wonder if epistomology will once and for all be blown out of the water (Hume is rolling in his grave)
How can epistemology be blown out of the water by empirical facts? Hume's description of the inability to be certain isn't just a psychological one, it's a logical one having to do with the weakness of inductive logic.
Isn't it highly unethical to give drugs to your wife and friends without consent? ;)
Seems very interesting. He is trying to bridge the gap into real, non-superficial understanding of the mind and body, a worthwhile endeavor indeed. What I hope is that people will follow his lead: He doesn't deny consciousness or free will to be valid phenomena, he just wants to explore their boundaries and causes.
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